Teaching Teens to Crochet

Back in February, I got an email from a student I had back in 2008 and 2009. Before I get to that email, I need to tell Taylor’s story first!

At that time Taylor was a senior in high school, and he went to Great Yarns, my LYS, and asked if they had a crochet instructor who would mentor him. I had been teaching regular classes the shop then, so they gave him my card.

In the state of Washington, some of our high schools have a senior project that take a semester long. In Taylor’s case, not only did he have to create something and learn along the way, he had to present the project to a board who reviewed it and gave him the grade.

Taylor had a HUGE, ambitious project. He wanted to crochet a hoodie, with pockets and a zipper. Taylor knew how to single and double crochet in the round before we got started because he learned to make hats first. But what he wanted to do was going to be a lot of skill learning in order to do what he wanted the final project to be. Designer that I am – and a very patient teacher too – I was a little bit worried that it wouldn’t turn out the way he wanted.

But Taylor is still what I would call one of my very best students ever. At 17-18 years old, he took to heart what I taught him, did his homework, and asked questions. In the end he had a stellar project that got him an A!

He had a hoodie that was made using my top down sweater technique. He learned how to do Tunisian entrelac, post stitches, how to make a hood and attach it, how to add snaps on crochet, and how to taper sleeve. Here is an image of the final project.

See that entrelac? Originally that was going to be a pocket. Instead he made it as the body of the sweater!

That spring Taylor graduated and moved on to Western Washington University. He would contact me from time to time to ask for help on a project he would be doing and I ran into him a couple times at Great Yarns. He was making hats and rugs in college and selling them to make money. I heard later that he was able to buy his first car by doing that! Definitely an entrepreneurial spirit! I cannot even begin to tell you how proud of him I am.

Anyway – fast forward to February when I get this email from him out of the blue! It had been at least 5 years since I spoke to him last. Back then, he had just graduated college and was working for The Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle. (another craft driven organization) But in this email I found he was a Teacher at a local High School! (Scriber Lake in Edmonds, WA) He was writing to ask if I would come in during their Mini Courses week and talk about how crochet became my career and then hang out with the class as they worked on stuff he and I gave them to do. How could I say no? Of course I was there.

Tuesday, April 11th I arrived at the school with books, and patterns in hand. Taylor met me and brought me to the classroom that had already started with the embroidery portion of the class. However, many of the students preferred to crochet and as they were watching the presentation were working on a crochet scarf in single crochet.

Once the Embroidery presentation was over, the Taylor introduced me and I gave a short talk on how I learned to crochet and how it grew into the design and teaching business it is today! I think many of them didn’t realize you can do what you love and make a career out of it too. So even in just those 10 minutes or so if I touched one student to think outside of the box, I did my job!

After my presentation, I had brought a pattern of mine for a Crochet Coffee cozy (this is the land of Starbucks you know) and the class was broken up into stations. Taylor had 2 crochet stations, one where they could work on whatever they had started the day before (mostly scarves) and one with me teaching the coffee cozy. So for the next 2.5 hours, all I did was work with 14-18 year-old students learning to crochet. We talked, they asked questions, they laughed. I had one young man who heard Taylor’s story and wanted to know more about what he can make. I found out later he made a scarf and a rug by the end of the week!

All in all, this was such a breath of fresh air for me. As a self-employed designer, a lot of my time is spent at my desk. I teach live right now maybe 3-4 times a year at large events, so much of my contact is online. Having a day to work with kids who signed up to take this class (and got .1 credit for it too) was so inspiring in ways I cannot even tell you! If you ever get an opportunity to go into a school and teach crochet, DO IT! You won’t believe what a different outlook you will come out with!

I want to end this post with photos of the kids hands as they crocheted. Each and every one of them was amazing! And I loved working with them!